begin quoting Andrew Lentvorski as of Sun, Oct 21, 2007 at 03:36:49PM -0700: [snip] > It's big-time vapor. > > This is a combination of a hard technical problem with a "really good > idea that nobody will pay for". I think you underestimate the gamer community.
Or the lure of the shiny. > The major problem is that you need to run wires into *each key*. This > is completely contrary to the way keyboards are made in which all the > wiring is on the backplane and the keys are just stupid hunks of plastic > that push on a rubber sheet with nipples (they really do look like > that). When a key squishes a nipple, it makes electrical contact with > the backplane. > > OLED needs continuous power. That's going to be a non-starter. Imagine > threading ribbon cables to every single key. Shudder. hmmm..... that would be neat. It would (or might) be easier to remap the control key... -- just swap cables! > Something like E-Ink that doesn't need continuous power would be a > better choice. You might be able to injection mold the key around the > electronics and only need to intermittently power the key when you need > to change it. This could possibly even be done contactless. I would expect this sort of thing to take place first, yes. > In addition, nobody will pay for the keyboard. There are *very* few > people who actually need a keyboard which reconfigures on the fly. > This, in fact, goes against the usage of a keyboard which is completely > based upon muscle memory. So, you need the keyboard until muscle memory > kicks in, and then it's useless. Imagine the iTunes Visualizer ... on the keyboard. Imagine color-coordinating your keyboard with your desktop background. The concept is sufficiently shiny that, if the technical difficulties were overcome, uses *would* be made of it. Not needful, necessarily, but 90% of what's driving the market these days isn't *needful*. It's glitz. It's the shiny. -- Why yes, I watched _Firefly_ recently. Why do you ask? Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
